


Thirteen Days of Spencer

by Deejaymil



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Cat AU, Cat Chaos, Everyone is a cat, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Fluff without Plot, Importance Caps, Just Add Kittens, Naughtiness, Silly, except Hotch, who is a Dog with a Job
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-09 06:04:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 16,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11663145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: “My name is Emily,” she said snootily, and danced away to sharpen her claws on the curtains. And that was when she noticed the open window. Outside was bright and sharp, just like her claws, and she knew it was thenaughtiestthing a cat could do, Running Away.“I’m gonna,” she said, and so she did.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'VE REACHED 100 FICS POSTED. This is my celebration fic, and it's utterly pointless and completely ridiculous. 
> 
> Enjoy.

**1.**

It was a boring day when Emily decided that she was going to Run Away. Running Away was a Very Naughty thing to do, she knew, and Emily had always _loved_ being Very Naughty. She’d learned all the naughtiest tricks. How to roll on the whitest clothes so her black fur showed up the clearest; all the best spots to kick at the carpet; just the perfect times to leap up onto countertops to cause maximum Cat Chaos. Oh yes. Emily was a **Very** Naughty cat, and that was how she liked it. Her days consisted of waking up, washing self, meowing for breakfast, washing self, Being Naughty, meowing for second breakfast, washing self, making sure the first three rounds of washing self were adequate and, if not, a fourth go at it, meowing for lunch, some more Being Naughty, nap before afternoon snack… etc. etc.

She was, Emily decided, the Most Perfect of cats, and it was completely dull.

“Am I a pretty cat?” she asked Ian one day, finding him sunning himself in the study. They were allowed in there, and he was on his bed being a perfectly good cat. How dull. He opened one blue eye and studied her as she examined his mottled grey fur. He was a nice cat, if boring, stocky and tomish. Toms were boring, she’d decided. All sleep and no fun, unless they were thinking about girls. And she was too young for him to be thinking about her being a girl, although she suspected—as she batted at his stubby tail with her perfect black paws—that was maybe changing.

“The prettiest,” he assured her. “Come here, let me clean your ears, Lauren.”

She didn’t want to have her ears cleaned. Not by _him_. Grey, she decided, was far too plain a colour to clean _her_ ears.

“My name is Emily,” she said snootily, and danced away to sharpen her claws on the curtains. And that was when she noticed the open window. Outside was bright and sharp, just like her claws, and she knew it was the **naughtiest** thing a cat could do, Running Away.

“I’m gonna,” she said, and so she did.

Outside was brilliant. _So_ brilliant. She ate a bug and then another and then some grass when her tummy complained about Too Many Bugs, and then she climbed _seven_ trees. Not just one tree—but seven! Outside, she decided, was the Very Best place to be a cat. She was going to stay Outside _forever_.

But, she realized, there was a problem. Because she was Outside and Ian wasn’t and her ears were possibly dirty. She stopped and licked herself thoughtfully, nice and warm on a sunny lawn and Very Far from Home and Ian. What if her ears were dirty? What if someone saw her with dirty ears? She couldn’t be the Most Perfect of cats with _dirty ears_. The very idea was outrageous! But she’d never been any good at cleaning her own ears…

Maybe, she thought, if I climb to that top of that fence—because she was a great climber, you know—I’ll be able to see someone who can help me clean my ears. Another cat perhaps. Off she went to the fence, only stopping once to eat another bug. And up up up the fence she went with the fence shaking and rattling gleefully under her paws and her claws going _snik snik snik_ in the wood. At the top, there was sun and wind and she was fully aware that she was an amazing cat and—what was that?

“ _Grrr_ ,” said the wind. Emily shivered—not because it was cold, but because that sound was deep and angry and _fierce_. Like a monster. No… worse than a monster.

“Dog,” declared Emily, spotting it. The thing was mangy brown and covered in dirt—dirty ears, she noted with a sniff—snapping and _grr_ ing and digging around with its galumphing great paws at a rattly piece of metal leaning against a wall. “Yuck, dog.” And she turned to leap down and away, because a place with dogs was No Place for her.

“Please go away,” the metal asked the dog politely. Emily paused. Could metal talk? Nothing at Home had ever talked, but then again, the Outside was different. “I don’t want to be eaten…”

But the dog wasn’t a clever dog, not at all, and he just barked and snarled and snapped and probably was gonna eat the metal, talking or not. Emily ran along the fence—for she was curious and full of errors, like poking her nose where it shouldn’t go—until she was above the dog and the metal, looking down.

“You’ll pay for this!” barked the dog at the metal. “Sinner! Coming here where you shouldn’t be!”

“ _Mew_ ,” said the metal. Emily gasped. That wasn’t metal at all—that was a kitten!

“Go away!” said another voice, the first. The kitten wasn’t alone under there. A dusty paw reached out and batted at the dog’s muzzle uselessly. No claws, Emily saw, and rolled her eyes. That was no way to scare off a stupid dog. They _only_ understood claws.

“Hey!” she hissed, puffing up big. She knew she looked ferocious: black as the night and with so much Floof that it made her three times as big as she really was with gleaming white claws and teeth. “Heck off!”

“Um mah,” said a kitten’s voice. “That was a bad word.”

“ _Shh_ ,” said the other.

“I’ll eat you,” warned the dog, looking up at her and going all bristly. “I’ll eat you too. I’ll eat you all!”

Emily decided that this was a time for Cleverness, not Claws. “You’re a Bad Dog,” she told him with a sniff. Stupid dogs, unlike clever cats, thought being Bad was a Very Terrible thing. Idiots. She could have told them that being Very Bad was the _best_. “Your person is going to tell you you’re a Bad, Bad, Awful, No Good Dog… in fact, I shall go and get them. I shall yowl and yowl until they come out and see how awful you’re being.”

“Very awful!” said the older voice from behind the metal. “You’re a **Bad** Dog, Tobias, and your owner will know!”

“You wouldn’t!” gasped the dog.

Emily laughed, sitting on the fence and puffing out her chest. “I would,” she promised, “I will!”

There was a loud moment of silence, and then the dog slunk away. “I’m letting you go because I’m Good!” he told them, tail between his legs. “But I won’t always be so nice!”

But the cats weren’t listening, because as soon as the dog had moved away, two blurs of fur and speed had shot out from behind the metal and gone dashing up the fence and away up the street. Emily, because it was impossible not to run when she saw others running, leapt up and ran with them, laughing gleefully because she’d outwitted a dog—and that was definitely Not Boring.

 

* * *

 

“Hello,” said the voice, when they’d finally stopped running. Emily looked around first, because it was a clever cat thing to do, to always know where you are. Then she washed her whiskers, because it was the Most Perfect cat thing to always look Your Best when talking to strange toms. And this was a tom—she could tell. “Um. Hello?”

Finally, she looked at him. Not to say hello yet. She needed to get an idea of just what kind of tom this was. After all, he certainly _seemed_ like a Very Nice cat—what with his four nice white paws and his lovely long whiskers—but there were aspects of him that she frowned a little at. His fur was scruffy and knotted and such a strange colour—brown! she scoffed, because she’d never seen such a dirt coloured cat with dust for a chest and wispy bits of fluff floating off of him. All skinny and bitten and—aha! He itched at his belly—covered in fleas. With a strange dark ring of fur around his neck and down his chest, like a line of blackish. Strange creature.

But, nice, she thought maybe, peering past him and down to the little white and grey and—orange? —kitten squished down hiding under his belly fluff.

“Hi,” she said finally, and whisked her tail up in the air to stand all proud and fluffy. He looked at it and she saw his pink nose twitch. “Why’d you take a dog on for?”

“It was my fault,” peeped the kitten. “I was exploring.”

“Nora likes to go where she shouldn’t,” the tom scolded, but his strange eyes—brown too, Emily thought, except almost green also and oddly fun to watch shift from colour to colour—were gentle. He wrapped a white paw around the kitten and tugged her out, vigorously washing her with a quick pink tongue. That Emily approved of. To show her approval, she washed as well, making sure to get all the dust out from between her toes. Dust was the bane of a black cat’s fur. When in doubt, wash! That was the cat way.

The purring, when it started, she wasn’t as fond of. It seemed almost _easy_ for a cat to purr. Emily _hmph_ ed. Affection slut, she termed the tom, as he purred happily at his little kitten and she purred back. These cats were _weird_. But maybe good at washing ears, if she didn’t mind the fleas.

“My name is Emily,” she said, when she was quite sure that she was adequately groomed enough to introduce herself. “I’m a Very Pretty cat,” she added, because she’d been told so often.

The tom looked at her, his eyes bright and whiskers twitching. “You are,” he said, and sidled closer, sniffing at her neck. “You’re the prettiest, I think. Do you have a mate?” He said so hopefully, barely a sneeze of a thing if she was to put Ian next to him.

“Oh, sometimes,” she lied to seem mysterious, dancing away. “Sometimes, not. When I want one.”

“Do you want one?” he tried, trying to copy her light moves and failing. Galumphing toms. All paws, no sass.

“I don’t even know your name.” And she didn’t. What kind of a cat did he take her for?

The tom blinked. “Oh, oops,” he said, looking down and away guiltily. She noted that he hadn’t groomed himself. There was a burr of fur by his foreleg that she dearly wished to get at. “Ah. Spencer. I’m… Spencer.”

“The Smartest,” Nora exclaimed. “Daddy is The Smartest—he can read!”

“Catshit!” Emily was indignant that they’d lie to her. Cats couldn’t read!

But Spencer looked shy. “I can,” he said, leaning close and peering at her collar. “See—I can read that. It says your name—Emily—and it says ‘1004 Washington Way’, and it says ‘Please call this number if found’ and then some more numbers.”

“What are numbers?” asked the kitten.

Emily was more focused on other things. “How does it know my name?” she asked, mystified. And just like That, she believed him. He was a Clever Cat indeed—perhaps the **cleverest**.

Spencer shrugged. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I had one once, a long time ago. It didn’t know my name though. It only said ‘Subject 114’ and ‘autoclave before disposal’. I took it off.” He looked proud for a moment. “I know how to undo things, as well. Would you like to come see my home?”

Emily paused. “I’m not going to be your mate,” she warned him. He shrugged. “You’re a funny colour and you’ve got tatty bits. And fleas…” His expression turned sheepish. “…but I’ll come see your home…”

And he brightened. He was, she decided, a nice cat, if a bit rough around the edges.

“Come on then!” he chirruped with a nice little purr, bumping up against her and rumbling happily. “Let’s go! Oh, JJ is going to think that you’re _lovely_.”

 

* * *

 

Spencer lived _Outside_.

Emily was pretty sure that that was the most _brilliant_ thing ever. She hadn’t known that you could live Outside! It seemed that Spencer—despite his weird colour and his fleas and his tatty bits—was a Very Naughty cat after all. Running Away, she decided, had been a roaring success.

“Here it is!” Spencer said, showing her a beautiful little mulberry bush with wide leaves and lots of interlocking branches. Underneath was dry and smelled of Spencer and a little of his kitten and very faintly of some other cats. Nora, as soon as they’d arrived at the leafy park Spencer called His Home, had vanished into the trees. Emily could see a jumble of rocks against a back fence and yards of greenery—and she could see curious eyes following them. “I dug it out myself.”

“It’s lovely,” Emily said, because it was. She sniffed around it appreciatively and then sealed her approval by stopping in the middle for a wash. Spencer politely sat next to her with his haunches making bumps on his back and his front paws tucked neatly under him, waiting for her to finish. “You could wash too, you know.”

“Oh.” Spencer unfolded a paw and licked it clumsily before stopping. “I’m, um. I don’t know how.”

Emily was appalled. How could he _not_ know how to _wash_? That was the Most Cat you could be! Maybe he wasn’t a cat. Maybe he was a squirrel pretending to be one. She sniffed him carefully, just to be sure.

“I think you look really nice when you wash though,” Spencer said, half-closing his brown-green eyes and looking away. She kept sniffing him. He didn’t _smell_ squirrelly. He smelled like a cat, a boy cat, about the same age as her, not sick or old or hurt…

There was simply No Excuse for him not knowing how to wash.

“ _Hmph_ ,” she said snootily, and looked away. How Ian would laugh about this!

“Oh, look,” Spencer whispered, slinking down onto his belly and peering out. “Shh, Emily… there’s The Man.”

The Man, as Spencer called him, was a human with a worried kind of face and clothes all ruffled. Emily watched as he poured kibble into a row of mismatched bowls, the kibble spilling out and into the dirt. Her tummy growled and she pushed past Spencer to go and eat, ignoring his gasp of, “Emily! You can’t let him see! He has a—”

Dog.

Emily paused as the dog got to its feet and _hrumph_ ed at her, plumy tail held high. It was one of those black and tan things who thought they were _all that_ and she stuck her nose up at him and sauntered past. His human was feeding them—therefore he was clearly a Cat’s Human and therefore a Good Human and that meant that this dog wouldn’t dare touch her. Not her! She was a show cat. She’d won _ribbons_.

“Thank you,” she _mrrp_ ed at the man as he paused to look at her, picking the bowl that looked the fullest in case Spencer would like to share with her and hungrily digging in. It wasn’t her usual food, but one couldn’t expect the usual food when one was Outside.

“Down, Hotch,” the man said to the dog, who sat down obediently. Bah. How boring a Good Dog was. Despite him being far _far_ bigger than necessary—which was anything bigger than her—she’d have given him a go if he’d pushed her. “Well, hello, you. Who are you then? Much too pretty to be one of these guys.”

Emily understood ‘down’ and she assumed Hotch was the dog, because Down was usually followed by a name—like Down, Emily! when she was on the cupboard—and, of course, she understood ‘pretty’, so she knew he was talking to her, but everything else was irrelevant to her and therefore ignorable. She kept eating. Where was Spencer? There was far too much food here for just her, or even her _and_ Spencer _and_ his kitten.

And then the man walked away, his dog padding with him, vanishing inside a house nearby. Emily eyed it and made a plan to check to see if there were things to Cause Chaos in there later, before Spencer ran up to her.

“You went up to a human!” he gasped, eyes wide and nose all twitchy. “That was dangerous!”

“Pah,” said Emily. “Humans aren’t nothing. I’ve lived with humans forever.”

But Spencer just looked worried, nudging close and eating from her same bowl. He looked skinny, so she pushed some of the best bits towards him. “I’m not so sure,” he said between bites. “Gideon is… okay. He never kicks or throws things, but… I don’t think all humans are nice. I don’t feel like they are.”

She looked at the strange black marks on his chest and how his throat was skinny and tattered where something—she suspected his collar, because hers had caused her trouble before her human had loosened it—had chewed away at all his fur.

“Maybe not all humans,” she agreed, and then the Others arrived.

“Who is this then?” boomed a big tuxedo tom with rippling muscles under a glossy coat. “What a snippet of a thing! Bet you’re no good in a tussle, girl.”

Emily fluffed up big and spat at him, just to prove she _was_.

“What a lovely coat,” said a soft-voiced little white cat, her fur yellowed at the paws by dirt. Blue eyes blinked up at her. What a tiny cat! “You’re not a Stray, are you?”

“Not at all,” Emily told her. “I’m Running Away.”

“I ran away once,” said another cat, this one a chubby tabby with strange, bright markings. “Oh, it was terrible, so scary, but then I found this place and these guys and they’re all so wonderful, aren’t they? Are you staying? What’s your name? Do you like mice? I know where to get the best mice—”

“Morgan, JJ, and Penny,” Spencer told Emily, his chest all proud again. “They’re my family. There are more—but they’re the Most Special.”

There were more. Other cats ate and bickered around them, kittens and toms and queens alike, but Emily ignored them. These ones were the ones Spencer wanted her to pay attention to, so they were the only ones she planned to pay attention to—yet, anyway.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Emily. I think I might stay a while. Are any of you good at washing ears?”

JJ, as it turned out, was wonderful at it.


	2. Chapter 2

**2.**

“I’ll teach you how to hunt!” Spencer said, which was all well and good but, as it turned out, Spencer wasn’t actually very _good_ at hunting. Not the actual take-down part anyway—he was fine at _finding_ stuff to eat, just not actually… eating it. Finally, he admitted, “Well, I usually do this with the others. I flush it out and they, ah, kill it.” He looked so woeful about this that she blinked at him a few times, slowly, so that he knew she was okay with it.

“I’m not very good at hunting either,” she admitted. “You’re lucky to have a colony to help. Ia—I mean, my human, he, ah, she never helped me out…”

“Oh, I didn’t always have a colony,” he told her. They were walking through the field behind the park Spencer lived in, grass rearing about their head. It was Very Outside, Emily thought. Dusty and grassy and the kind of place you might be able to get away with having dirty ears. Unnerved by that thought—she couldn’t _possibly_ go home when she was done Being Naughty if she had dirty ears—she stopped and washed. “I was alone for a while, after I lost Maeve. I don’t remember much about it, just that I was hungry a lot. I’m not hungry now. Oh, hello.”

Emily paused her bath. There was a couple of lady cats, some with kittens in tow, lounging on a rock above their heads.

“Hi, Spencer,” some of them tittered. Some fluffed up dangerously at the sight of a tom near their brood. The kittens, however, all mewled happily and surged forward in a gaggle of multi-coloured paws and tails to crowd around Spencer and demand _stories_! Emily sniffed. An astonishing amount of the younger crowd smelled of _Spencer._ For his first year—she assumed, because he was barely her age and still as skinny as a spit—he’d sired an impressive amount of young.

Young who seemed to _like_ him.

What an Interesting Cat, Emily thought.

“Who is this!?” the kittens were demanding, all their stubby tails turning to face Emily until she was surrounded by a sea of tiny pink noses. “Who are you!”

“Her name is Emily!” The new voice was Nora, bouncing up all paws and whiskers and dirty fur. The other mama cats gave the filthy newcomer a _look_ and meowed their own, cleaner, offspring back. “It’s on her collar. We read it, didn’t we, Daddy?”

“We did,” Spencer reassured her.

“You need to wash,” Emily scolded Nora, not liking seeing such a dirty little snippet of a thing. Spencer _might_ get away with not washing, but only because he was a tom. Ladies **must** wash. Emily swished her tail, for good measure. “You’ll never have a lovely tail like this if you don’t wash,” she added.

Nora blinked, peering back at her tail and almost falling over. “I don’t know how to wash,” she said sadly. “Mama never taught me and then she went away.”

“Oh,” said Emily. Where on earth would her mama go? Outside, she was feeling, was a bit more Danger than she’d expected.

Spencer said nothing.

The other cats had moved away, leaving them alone in the afternoon sun. Emily wanted a nap. And some food. And to be Naughty, but she was beginning to think that maybe Outside had Responsibilities… and maybe this was one of them. “Come here,” she said firmly, and caught Nora with one of her black paws. “I’ll teach you. You must start—but only when it’s safe—with the belly. The belly is Most Important.”

Spencer purred happily.

Evening brought with it fireflies. They chased them and ate them and Emily was a little unhappy that she was still hungry after but suspected that might just be because Inside was easier than Outside, and she did thrive on a challenge. But then came the yowl.

It was a girly, teasing yowl, and Spencer turned right around and trotted off without a word. “Hey!” she shouted after him. “Don’t you dare leave me here!” But he was gone.

“Daddy has a lady,” Nora said wisely, chewing on a walking stick bug. “I think that was Lila yowling. He’ll be back.”

Emily felt annoyed. What did that cat have that she didn’t? She was the **prettiest** and the Most Naughty and the blackest as well! She bet that other cat had… had… _dirty ears_. _Hmph_ , she thought, and stuck her nose in the air as far as it would go and strode away. See how he liked it! She’d… she’d go Home! To Ian, who didn’t go off after yowling hussies, and who thought she was lovely! Bah!

“Grumpy cat,” said a deep voice, and she froze because that voice was right behind her and above her head and being snuck up on meant either Running Real Fast or Staying Very Still and she wasn’t sure enough of her paws to know which was the best right now. “Where’s your bite gone, cat?”

She turned. She refused to be eaten without watching it happen. Hotch stood behind her, his paws shockingly silent for such a thumping great thing and his eyes a deep woeful brown. She swallowed. “You can’t eat me,” she warned him. “I’m far too much cat for you. I’ll… I’ll fight you all the way down and chew my way out from your guts, you watch.”

Hotch blinked. “Wow,” he said mildly, his expression unchanging. “Well then. I certainly wouldn’t want to mess with… that. Where’s your mate?”

“He’s _not_ my mate,” Emily sniffed. “He’s off with a lady. I’m going _Home_.”

The dog cocked its head to the side. Nora reappeared, having vanished with a _puff_ of panic and a small mewl when the dog had startled them. Nervously, she sniffed at the paws that were almost as big as she was. “Hmm,” said the dog. “You don’t fit in here.”

Outrageous! Emily fit in wherever she damn well pleased! She spat, just to show him that she _did_ belong.

“I am a Dog with a Job,” Hotch said solemnly. “My Job is to Guard. I Guard everything here… and that includes cats. But you don’t belong here. Do I Guard you?”

“I don’t need to be guarded,” Emily told him. “I guard myself, with my Claws and my Cleverness. Like all cats do.”

“Hmm,” said Hotch again. “Perhaps. Let me know if you do belong here. I should like to know if I need to Guard you too. Regulations demand it, you understand. You, what are you doing?” He was talking to Nora, who was attacking his tail. “I don’t know what to do with kittens.”

“Teach them to wash,” Emily advised wisely.

“Oh.” He looked at her again. “Very well then. I shall do that, sometime.” And he padded away, only pausing to _whuf_ hot air all over Nora, who giggled.

“I like him,” she declared. “Oh, hi Daddy!”

Spencer was back and looking smug, wet all over and with a big scratch on his little nose. “I lost,” he said cheerfully, still looking proud. “And I fell into a pool _and_ Morgan smacked me. Look!” He crinkled his nose. “A real battle-scar!”

“You were nicer without it,” Emily snapped. She didn’t think she liked the Outside anymore. Real cats didn’t _really_ fight. Not like that. Morgan was supposed to be _family._ And she was hungry. And it was cold. And would he leave again if another cat yelled for some? “I’m going Home.”

And just like that, Spencer deflated. “Oh,” he said. His whiskers drooped. “Oh…”

She did feel a bit bad. And it was late. And, as they were standing there, she heard the bowls being filled with kibble.

What was one more night?

“Tomorrow,” she added, and he nodded.

“I’ll walk you there,” he said softly. “It’s dangerous to be alone.”

He would know, she supposed. He was a real Outside cat, and she was… well, really only Naughty on the Inside.


	3. Chapter 3

**3.**

Something had changed about him, she thought. They were walking Home in silence in the brisk morning air and the world was quiet around them. He was still scruffy, still a weird colour, still… wispy. He scratched at his ruff and something nipped at her flank and she sighed, anticipating a flea bath in her future. But she looked at him and felt…

Different. What good was being Very Pretty out here? No… she couldn’t wait to get home, where her long glossy fur and delicate paws were _useful_. Not somewhere where she needed to be scruffy and skinny to belong.

Nora followed, running around with boundless energy. Emily felt amped and ready to run, as though she could gallop and bounce alongside the kitten with the same mad grace. But she didn’t. She just quietly led the way to where she knew Home was.

“It’s Ethan!” Nora cried out, right as a big mottled orange tomcat just as scruffy as Spencer himself slipped out from behind some trashcans. He was missing an ear, his muzzle all bitten up. “Hi, Ethan!”

“Hello, Favourite Kitten,” Ethan greeted her, knocking her down with a paw the size of Emily’s face. She hid behind Spencer. Facing down dogs was one thing—this was a Big Tom and she was wary of those. “Spencer—you shouldn’t be out. There are Men with Nets poking around. Three gone from my colony just this week.”

“Oh dear,” Spencer said, pressing back against her. “Where?”

Nora was suddenly under Emily as the toms talked. “Oh no,” she whimpered, her little ears back and eyes wide. “Men with Nets took Mama away… I’m scared of those…”

Emily paused. They were still far away from Home, but not from Spencer’s… “We should go back,” she said, because it wasn’t right to take a kitten out into danger. “I’ll go home later—when they’re gone.”

“Okay,” Spencer agreed, and they turned tail and ran back—this, Emily knew, was a cats’ Cleverness in knowing when to Stay and when to Go.

But Spencer’s home wasn’t as cosy as when they’d left it. Emily sniffed the air as they slipped through the fence, the field oddly silent. “Do you smell smoke?” she asked, seeing Spencer sniff too. “Is there a fire here?”

“Oh no,” Spencer repeated, and ran. Emily chased, her body quivering with worry. “Oh no!”

The Man’s house was burning.

Emily stopped and stared. She’d never seen anything as Alive as this fire. It leapt and crackled and reached for the staring cats with hungry fingers. Black smoke billowed with loud groans. A finger snapped away and tumbled through the air towards them, almost scorching Morgan’s fur as he dashed away with a yowl.

This was no longer a Cat’s Place. Like ghosts, the colony was dissipating in a panic. Sirens wailed. There would be humans here soon—no place for them to be. Even Emily, with only an Inside knowledge of the world, knew this.

“Wait,” said Nora, the flames reflected in her grey-green eyes. “Where’s Hotch?”

Spencer and Emily looked to the burning house. The fire was Alive because it would steal from any creature who went too close—they knew that innately, even if they’d never been scorched before. Every creature knew a fire meant Death. If Hotch was in there, then the groans of the flames were the only parts of him left Alive anymore.

_I Guard_ , he’d told Emily.

“Who Guards him if he Guards us?” she asked Spencer, who blinked with a cat’s slow panic, his tail whisking. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t—

Spencer surged up with a burst of speed, a brown-blur on the ground that rocketed between the few remaining cats— _Spencer_! cried JJ—and leapt into a window that was shattered and warped, blurring as the fire twisted it.

Emily went Mad. That’s what she’d call it later. It was an Outside mad. Sometimes, Inside, she’d gone a little Mad too—that was when she’d run around, jump from walls, yowl and sing and dance around just because she was a Cat and Alive and Wild, sometimes.

She followed him. They dived into the fire together, but the floor wasn’t a floor anymore and they fell, screaming, into the black.

…

..

.

..

…

Emily blinked. She was alive, somehow, but not Alive—the world was black and she washed her paws and face quickly to make sure she could. She could. Knowing this, she staggered upright, feeling her eyes adjusting to the gloom, seeing Spencer shaking soot from his fur in front of her. His eyes glinted in the dark.

They followed the sound of a slowly beating heart.

“Get out,” Hotch growled when they found him. The roof above yawned. “This place is Death and I won’t see you chewed up.”

“No,” they both told him. “We’re Cats,” Emily added.

Spencer finished: “We never do as we’re told.”

And together: “Now move or we’ll die to spite you.” They would, too. A cat was a cat—they’d lose their own tails to sass him.

He whined. He snarled. He barked.

He got up. Limping and gasping and choking, he allowed them to lead him through the black until they found a stairwell up and out. “My Human isn’t Home,” Hotch moaned, smoke in his eyes and his body, “I’m alone.”

“Alone is dangerous,” Spencer said after a beat, jumping up the stairs lightly. Fire flickered above. “You should stay with us. We’ll protect you.” Emily followed and, side-by-side, led the dog upstairs into the flames.

They were small and the smoke didn’t reach them as bad as it did the dog. “Go flat on your belly!” Emily told him—she’d seen dogs do it, at the shows she’d been to, the ones where she’d won her ribbons— “and follow us at a crawl!” He did, inching painfully behind them. They smelled fresh air and found the window, the floor between them and it gone. But they were cats—they could jump.

“Bet you can’t make it,” Emily sassed, and leapt from the floor to the window, jauntily dancing on the sill before leaping back. She coughed as smoke found her and writhed its choking way down her throat: “Bet you can’t, stupid dog.”

“Useless dog,” Spencer added, eyeing the leap nervously. He didn’t tease as well as she did. “Can’t-jump-a-hole-dog.”

“Can’t-fight-a-fire-dog,” Emily said.

Spencer meowed: “Going-to-be-a-Bad-Dog-dog,” and Hotch jumped. Almost missed.

Made it.

With a loud sound of his legs kicking and scrabbling, he tumbled up and out of the window.

“Good Dog!” they both sung, and Emily leapt after him. The air outside kissed at her whiskers and her fur, pleased she was still Alive, and she yowled, “Fire is nothing to the cat!” at anyone who was listening. Then she paused. Turned. Spencer was still inside. “Hurry up,” she said, suddenly sorry she’d teased the fire as the house began to crumble inward.

“I don’t think I can.” He blinked, slowly, his mouth gaping open with worry. He was a fluffed up, sooty-singed black shred of a cat—almost as black as her without any of the pretty. “Emily, I can’t.”

“I made it,” she snapped, turning on the sill. It was hot here. Her eyes hurt. Her head thumped. She couldn’t breathe properly. Why was he being so Bad! “Use your claws, idiot tom!”

Another slow blink. “I don’t have any,” he said quietly.

Emily swallowed.

“Go,” Spencer mewled, huddling down in a fuzzy ball of sad fur. “We’re cats. We’re not brave—we’re clever. Cats don’t die for other cats. That’s a dumb dog thing to do.”

Maybe.

But she wasn’t a Very Good cat after all.

“If you stay, I’m staying,” she said quietly. “I’m staying!” louder, just for the fire to hear. In case it wanted to know who it was going to eat today. She’d make it work for it though. She’d dance and yowl and hiss and spit the whole time it chewed at her bones.

And Spencer leapt. She’d thought he might. She didn’t think he was a Good Cat in that way either—they were both Imperfect Cats. _Imperfect_ , she thought, as he landed and slipped and she lashed out and caught him like he was a big, sooty kitten and hauled him from the sill. They landed in a tangle and leapt up in a blur and ran from That Place as it Burned and it Burned.

Alive.

 

* * *

 

His bush had survived. They came back that night when the humans were gone and huddled together under it. No other cats had returned yet. They were alone.

“You’re a mess,” Emily told Spencer, looking him up and down. His normally scruffy fur was even worse than usual—gone in places where the fire had bitten chunks right out, falling out in others. His paws were scabby and gross. Worst of all, his ears were dirtier than ever.

But he looked at her and twitched his whiskers and said, “So are you.”

And she was, really. Her fur was just as bad as his. Just as tatty and just as torn and just as dirty.

“Well then,” she said, swallowing. Who was she?

Unsure, that’s who she was.

“Still very pretty though,” Spencer murmured, which was nice of him but it didn’t feel so important anymore.

“Shut up,” she told him, and pinned him down with a paw. “You’re such a kitten. Here…”

She started with his ears. Worked her way down. Under his ratty fur, she could feel every bump of bone, every scabby scratch from fights and scuffles. It made her feel small and very, very young, and a little bit like everything she knew was probably a bit Wrong.

He purred the whole way through.


	4. Chapter 4

**4.**

The Man, Gideon, left. His Home was gone. This was no longer a place for Gideons, just as it was no longer a place for Cats. But Spencer and Emily stayed and, eventually, Others returned. Not to the park… just to them. Home was in your colony, Emily was beginning to suspect.

They weren’t the only ones who returned.

“Hello, spitting cat,” said Hotch, limping up to her and laying down with his nose poking under the mulberry bush. “I almost didn’t recognise you without your pretty fur.”

Emily ignored this. Fur didn’t make the cat, she’d decided. After all, Spencer was a Wonderful Cat, and his fur was **awful**. Although, slightly less awful now that she’d tidied it up a bit for him. He was all smooth now instead of wispy, but his coat was still dull.

“Why aren’t you with your human?” Spencer asked, waking up and rolling over to peer at the dog. They were dozing under the bush in a comfortable ball of singed fur, sleeping off the heavy limbs and aching heads of the previous day. Plus, they were both hungry and well aware that if The Man was going, so was the food.

“Because my Job is to Guard,” Hotch said simply. “You are still here. Therefore, my Job is not finished.”

“When will your Job finish?” Nora asked.

“When I am Done,” was the answer, and that seemed sensible enough to the cats, so they accepted that here Hotch was to stay—an odd member of their colony, perhaps, but they were all a little strange.

But food was the next thing of importance. “We’ll go stay with Ethan,” Spencer declared. The Others were horrified by this.

“We can’t take over another colony!” Morgan said, “They’ll tear us to bits!”

JJ and Will, her mate, pressed close. A half-grown kitten about Nora’s age tucked between them watched the bickering. “Are we going to starve?” he asked, his eyes huge in his dirty white face.

“Of course not,” Spencer said, turning to them. “Henry, I promise you. We’ll be fine.”

“I trust you,” said Henry warily, which wasn’t very catlike. Cats didn’t trust anyone.

Emily shifted on her paws and felt small again.

“There’s a human home behind Ethan’s colony,” Will said suddenly. “Their territory doesn’t extend there. If they don’t mind our hunting overlapping…”

“Perfect,” Spencer decreed, and off they went. It didn’t take very long to get to the new place. There was some spitting and dancing when the cats already there saw them, but Emily saw them look at Spencer and slink away. Ethan, it appeared, had spoken out for his strange friend. The new place—it wasn’t a home yet, smelling like it did of different cats—was small and cramped and rocky, but there were lots of wooded places for a cat to hide and the cabin nearby didn’t smell too strongly of human. Emily slipped away, sniffing for herself to distract herself from her grumbling tummy.

Her paws hurt. She missed home. She missed her bowls and Ian and not having sore bits. She missed being so sure of herself and her place and knowing that she was Very Important. Nothing really felt as important anymore, except Not Dying. “I haven’t even been Outside that long,” she said to herself, and that was when she found the meat.

Her confidence returned. It was a lovely smelling chunk, fresh and delightful, and Very Yum. Just like that, she knew she was Important and Good and Naughty all at once, and felt a bit of bounce come back into her paws. She’d eat some and then take it back to the Others and they’d tell her she was a wonderful Outside cat, just like she’d been a wonderful—

“Emily!” yowled Spencer, and she dropped the meat with a mewl because he sounded _angry_. When Ian was angry, truly angry, she ran.

She did so now, bolting for the trees and climbing as high as she could go with a rapid _sniksniksnik_ of claws in wood. And there she stayed, trembled and fluffed up and rumbling with fear.

_Snik snik snik_ went someone following her and she shrunk away. It was JJ.

“Are you okay?” JJ asked, pausing when she saw Emily all balled up and shaking. “We’re not mad, Em, we’re not—that meat was bad. Humans make it bad sometimes, and if you eat it you’ll die. Did you eat it?”

Emily didn’t answer. Humans did _what_? She pulled away, feeling her collar bump heavily around her throat.

What?

“Did you eat it?” JJ pushed, inching closer. “Spencer is terrified down there, Em—we need to know. You’ll know if you did—you’ll bleed and hurt.”

“No,” rasped Emily, relaxing her claws from the wood finally and meowing uncomfortably as her tensed muscles relaxed. “I… I didn’t eat it.”

“Okay,” said JJ softly. “Can you climb down? I was an Inside Cat once… I wasn’t very good at climbing trees when I got out. Do you need help?”

Emily blinked. JJ had been Inside once? “Why did you Run Away?” she asked.

JJ was quiet. The tree swayed under them. “My owner died,” she said finally, her voice muted. “A human kitten… she… hurt herself, and then her dam didn’t want me anymore. So they put me outside, far away from them. And then Will found me, when I thought I’d die. And I didn’t. And here I am.”

Emily shivered unhappily. She’d chosen to go Outside. She wasn’t sure if she regretted that yet, but JJ wasn’t done talking.

“It gets easier, you know,” she was saying, “being out here. I know how you’re feeling right now… it’s very easy to be big when you’re the only cat around. Everything is important, everything is yours. And then suddenly the world is bigger than you are and you’re just a little cat—we grow up fast out here. Inside? You can take a little longer being small.”

Emily wasn’t sure that, if this was being grown up, that she wanted any part of it.

“I can climb down,” she said, finding a little of the Very Important cat she’d been and following JJ down. “And if I can’t, I’ll work it out.”

 

* * *

 

A new man arrived on their first evening there, moving boxes into the cabin house. Emily hissed at him from where she was hidden under the porch with Spencer. Spencer was clinging, nudging his nose against her fur and sniffing at her mouth and whiskers endlessly. He even ignored the man.

“Are you _sure_ you didn’t eat any?” he fretted.

“I’m sure,” Emily grumbled. “Stop poking. Where’s Nora?”

Spencer shrugged, looking around only a little. Emily felt something deep in her twist. _We grow up fast out here_ , JJ had said. Was Nora already old enough to be her own cat, out here? All alone?

Would Spencer move on from her so quickly?

“Oi, get out of it, mongrel animals!” roared the man, throwing something at the bushes. Cats scattered. Spencer frowned.

“Problem for later,” he murmured, and coaxed Emily deeper under the house, still annoyingly worried about her.

“If you’re going to be pokey, be useful about it,” Emily growled, whisking her tail at him and batting half-heartedly at his muzzle with her claws sheathed. “Wash my ears.”

He blinked. “I don’t know how.”

“Well, try.”

He did. He really did. He even sort of got the hang of it eventually, his tongue rasping neatly over her fur over and over and over in a soothing, lulling motion that rocked her gently to sleep…

_Spencer? Hello. Ethan said you were here._

_Austin, ah, hello. Hi._

Emily heard purring and rolled, chirruping deep in her chest and nuzzling closer. A cool nose bumped against her head, the warm chest pressed to her side rumbling. Ian? she wondered. Mom? A tongue rasped on her muzzle, she drifted a little, scenting cat…

_Would you like to run tonight? I wouldn’t mind you, you know. You’re, um, nice. And help with the litter. Everyone says so._

_No, thank you. I’m going to stay here, I think. Thank you, though._

_Oh…_

Emily snapped awake to yelling. Spencer was still there, lines of sunlight making dusty yellow streaks on his narrow face as he peered up at the porch above. “Who was here?” Emily asked, sniffing and smelling an unfamiliar female.

“Mm? Oh. Ah, Ethan’s old mate. She was courting.” Spencer seemed distracted, standing and padding forward to peer out from between the cracked wood planks to watch two men outside fight. Emily couldn’t see a female human out there, but she assumed that was what they were arguing about.

“Did you go?” Emily asked, her stomach pinching. Ow.

“No.” Spencer hunched tighter. “Emily, come here. See that man? His fur has words on the back—would you like me to read it to you?”

Emily sat next to him, watching the men fight. One was the cat-hating-man from the night before. “You put one more of those baits on my land and I’ll kick your ass!” he was saying, which made no sense to her.

“Yes, please,” she said.

“Fo… Foyet Pest Control,” Spencer read out carefully. “237 Jacoby Street. I don’t know what that means.” Emily shrugged.

“I do,” said a deep voice. A large muzzle shoved between them, Hotch having crawled under the back of the house and over to join them, somehow silently. “Pests are animals that humans don’t want. Raccoons, mice—vermin.”

“Cats?” asked Emily, her heart hammering as she thought about the bad meat.

The others were silent.

“Sometimes,” Spencer said quietly, and looked troubled. “Sometimes…”


	5. Chapter 5

**5.**

They all went hunting and managed to find enough to scrounge some kind of meal together. Emily washed herself after and felt ribs through her fur, sitting quietly and thinking about that. That’s where Spencer found her—sitting on a low tree-branch contemplating.

“Do you want to go home?” he asked, looking up at her and sitting down with a _fumf_. “I can take you home, if you like. It’ll be winter soon. We’ll be living off of trash.”

Emily shook her head slowly. “I don’t know,” she said, feeling strange all over. “Ask me again tomorrow.”

 

* * *

 

Hotch vanished for hours and returned just as Mad as Emily had been the night of the fire. “The scrapyard dogs are gone,” he announced. The cats looked puzzled. What interest were dogs to them? But Hotch continued: “My mate and pup among them.”

Ah.

They looked to each other, all unsure of what to reply. Cats didn’t die for cats, and they certainly didn’t for dogs. But…

Emily stood. “We’ll find them,” she said, with no idea of how. “Does anyone know where they take the ones they catch?”

“Away,” Nora said.

“Forever,” Morgan added, fluffing his fur out and washing between his toes to hide his worry.

“No, but we can find out,” Spencer said quietly. Everyone looked at him. “There’s a map—it’s a human way of finding themselves—near here, on a beachfront. The man who came here yesterday had words on his fur. I don’t know what the first means—but the second, the numbers and the Street, that’s where a place is. I know how to find things like that. I have before.”

Spencer, Emily decided, was the Most Cleverest of Cats, and there would **never** be cleverer.

 

* * *

 

They found a building that smelled of animals and sadness, and Spencer worked the handles on the inner gates open. Once inside, the Others were tense, so stressed that Emily could smell it on them. They weren’t used to being Inside.

Emily was.

“Follow me,” she told them, and stuck to the outer wall where they could find windows to escape if they needed to as they walked down tiled corridors that made Hotch’s claws go _click click click_. In the end, it was strangely easy. With Hotch big enough that he could have Spencer perch on his head and reach up to open any doors they found, leaving a cat behind at each to keep a look out and hold the door open, they followed a scent Hotch declared _Familiar_.

They found Jack. The pup was a sad bundle of fur sitting on his own in a cage that Spencer unlocked swiftly, leaping from Hotch’s shoulders as the puppy tumbled out to greet his dad with a wildly wagging tail. He didn’t look a whole lot like his dad. Hotch, it seemed, had found himself a pretty little fluffy lady to have pups with when his human wasn’t looking. Emily liked that. It was very Bad Dog. Maybe Hotch would fit in with them after all.

But Haley was gone.

They made it Home without trouble. Hotch and Jack were silent.

“Where do the animals go after the cages?” Emily asked Spencer softly.

He shivered. They were under the porch again, watching Hotch consoling Jack. The pup was shivering too, the cold bitter. “Away,” he said, and refused to say anything more.

“It’s cold,” whined Jack, his puppy howls getting louder as he called for his dam, for his friends, for his home. Hotch was helpless, unused to being a dad.

“Help him,” Nora said suddenly, appearing with Henry at her side. “Come on, Dad. You know this stuff—help him.”

Spencer thought for a moment. “Alright, everyone,” he said loudly. Heads turned to face them. “You heard Nora—we’re helping. Everyone pile in.”

It was, Emily would think after, the strangest night she’d ever spent, in a pile of cats and dogs wrapped around and over each other. When someone started purring, others joined in, until the porch was reverberating with the amount of happy rumbling going on within it. She might have joined in, but she’d never admit it after.


	6. Chapter 6

**6.**

Spencer woke up cheerful, unwinding himself from around the snoring puppy and poking Emily with his cold nose until she grumpily dug herself out from under JJ and followed him out into the yard.

“Do you want to go Home?” he asked, turning on her with a whirl of white paws. She blinked and sat down to consider it, drawing out the moment by washing vigorously. Belly first, then back, paws, face…

“Get my ears,” she demanded. Spencer only paused for a moment before leaning against her in a long-line of skinny feline and gently licking at the base of her right ear, his chest rumbling as a loud and probably involuntary purr kicked up. It was cold. Only because it was cold, she pressed closer to him and half-closed her eyes. Did she want to go Home? She was hungry, painfully so. She was itchy. Her fur was falling out where the Fire had singed it. Home was _boring_. She just couldn’t decide, not right now, so she said: “Ask me again tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he said brightly, stopping washing her and prancing away, tufty tail flicking. “Then I have more time to show you the Most Amazing things about Outside.”

“Is one of those things food?” she asked. He bared his teeth in a weird expression, whiskers twitching happily.

“Of course!”

 

* * *

 

The Most Amazing thing, as it turned out, was the—

“It’s called a ‘public library’,” Spencer exclaimed, slipping through an open window and moving aside so she could look down unto rows and rows of shelves and books. People moved among them, the entire place sunk in a hushed quiet. “Isn’t it great?”

“It’s full of books,” she replied, blinking fretfully with her tail swishing. She knew books. Home had books. “You can’t eat books”

She’d tried.

“I know. That’s not the cool thing. Come on.”

He led her back out the window, running along the ledge until they came around to a wide human-thronged courtyard and climbed their careful way down the stone building. Emily was relaxing, making sure to walk Very Prettily when a little girl pointed to her. Spencer twitched whenever eyes went their way. But no one really paid attention to them, which Emily thought was rather rude.

“Here,” Spencer murmured, poking his nose around a corner and peering into a shadowed hall. Within the open hall, the walls were liberally coated in papers, tattered and torn and flapping in the wind. “Humans leave their marks here so other humans know what they’re doing.”

“Oh!” said Emily, fascinated. Without fear, she trotted into the hall, hearing Spencer squeak a little behind her as humans stepped out of her way. “How interesting! What are they doing? Read some to me!” Reading, she was finding, was maybe a little more interesting than she’d thought.

Spencer had slunk after her, his eyes wide and skin twitching, belly flat against the ground. “There are humans here,” he hissed, showing his teeth.

She sighed. Such a worry wart. There weren’t _nearly_ as many people here as there were at her shows, and there they were _all_ looking at her. But, because he smelled worried, she bumped her nose against his and rumbled, “I’ll Guard you then,” in what was the closest to a purr she’d allow. After all, if Hotch could Guard, then she could too. She was a Very Clever cat, after all, even if her scorched fur wasn’t quite as pretty anymore.

Inches from hers, his brown eyes blinked slowly, his body settling. _I am calm,_ those slowly shutting eyes said, and she felt his whiskers brushing hers. A cool brush as his nose tapped back against her and the rumble was back as he purred. Such an _easy_ cat.

“Okay,” he purred, his voice oddly warm, and she wiggled in place as it added to the hot-flushed feeling she’d been battling the last day or so. It made her want to snuggle and purr and curl up small somewhere dark and quiet, with just her and him and—

Well, some food would be nice.

Squeezing back a _filthy_ purr that she burned with shame to imagine voicing, she whirled away from him and peered up at the wall. “That one!” she demanded, finding a paper piece with loud marks all over it and a picture of a Hotch splayed across the front.

“Dogs for Sale,” Spencer read out obediently after a glance, more preoccupied with winding around her in tightening circles, his paws going _pad pad pad_ on the cement floor. People around them chattered and laughed and she swiped at his side playfully. “Wonderful Puppies. Very fun. Good with kids.”

“What are kids?” she queried. He wound past again, making her dizzy with his endless circles, and she stood restlessly. Stretched as he _chirr_ ed at her and arched her back, knowing it made her look long and lean and Really Wild. Sharp claws clicked on the cement, stark white against her vivid black, but she withdrew them quickly as he looked down at them.

“Baby goats.” His nose bumped her throat as he finished winding and wrapped himself around her, a warm fuzzy length. He was still _purring_. “That one there, with the flowers—it says ‘Dancing Lessons Learn to Love.’”

Emily would _never_ understand these humans.

“That one,” she said, and took advantage of him looking away to wash him thoroughly. One paw on his shoulder, like he was a naughty kitten, she took out the hot-flushed feeling on his rough fur.

“Big Lunch Now Open.” He looked a bit thrown as he read that one, his little heart going _pattapat_ in his chest. She snuggled up under him, rolled onto her back, and listened to it with her paws curled up and belly exposed. Feeling, all at once, Young and Silly and Alive and Wild and very much like she wanted him close. Using her front paws to box gently at his jaw, she squeaked indignantly as he nipped at her toes, his tail lashing. “Speaking of, we should get some food.”

“Yeah,” she said absently, spotting a burr in his fur and wiggling up to nip at it. “We should.”

Soon.

“You’re being weird,” Spencer grumbled at her, inching away from her nipping teeth. “Why are you being all… weird.”

What? She stopped, incensed. “I’m not weird,” she hissed, drawing herself up and puffing out her chest angrily. “I’m not! I’m Pretty and Black and _Clever_ , but not _weird_. You’re weird! You’re the _weirdest_. I’ve never met a cat less Cat than you!”

He opened his mouth to answer, but a shriek over their heads distracted them both.

A shriek, and a word. A word she _knew_.

“Emily!”

Suddenly, she was being lifted into the air with two hands firmly around her belly, meowing in shock and catching a blurry glimpse of Spencer rocketing away through the laughing crowd, his tail fluffed up in shock and his paws skittering on the cement. Then she was righted and turned, finding herself blinking up at her human.

“Oh you _Naughty Cat_ ,” Elizabeth breathed, fingers tickling Emily’s chest as they found her collar. “Where have you been!”

Behind her on the papered wall, Emily could see her own face staring back, a pile of unstuck papers dropped onto the floor and blowing about in the breeze.

“Oh,” said Emily, as she was carried from the hall in a firm grasp. “Oh,” she said again, as they climbed into a car and she was wrestled into a familiar carrier that smelled of Home. The last thing she saw, as the door closed between her and the Outside, was Spencer sitting in the middle of the footpath, unafraid of the humans around him as he watched her with open horror.

“Oh,” she said, one last time, and the door slammed shut.


	7. Chapter 7

**7.**

Home sucked.

“Rooorrrrowooorororowwww,” Emily complained at the closed window and, “Rooooowwwwwww,” at the relentlessly shut front door and, “Mrrrooooooooooowwwwwwww,” at the utterly boring _everything_.

Inside _sucked_.

There were no bugs to eat, no JJ to wash, no Hotch to tease. Ian was there but he wasn’t helping with the boring because he wouldn’t stop talking about how she shouldn’t have Run Away and how much of a Bad Cat she was and how _kittenish_ she was being. But she just wanted to lay in sun that wasn’t filtered by glass and shit anywhere _but_ the stupid little box she was allowed and she wanted…

She wanted _Spencer._

“She’s never been like this before,” Elizabeth was saying to the vet after Emily had been unceremoniously thrown back into the carrier and driven there. Emily, cranky and grumbly and not at all happy with the cold, gloved hands scruffing her, rumbled unhappily on the steel table. “She ate until she was sick and then _was_ sick and then started making this noise! And her fur—why is her fur like that? We have a show in a _month_.”

“She has fleas,” the vet was saying. Emily listened to their unintelligible noises disinterestedly, instead looking across the room to a bank of cages there. Other animals watched her from within. “Is Emily spayed?”

“Oh god, she’s not pregnant, is she? I was going to put her with my tom—she _scratched_ him when he sniffed at her when I brought her home. He has a horrid mark on his nose now—that will cost him the Championship and he was a _shoo-in_ , oh _Emily_.”

Oh Emily, as she was sometimes called when she was Very Naughty—and she was a little smug to have earned that term today: “Damn right I’m Naughty,” she told Elizabeth with a sassy flick of her rump—growled just to show them that she was Unhappy with a capital Un. But the stupid humans kept talking—

“—spaying would help with the temper and the wandering, unless you want kittens—”

—and something was _bothering_ her about one of the cats in those cages. One that watched Emily glumly with her grey and white nose tucked neatly on her paws, a slash of orange colouring vivid on her shoulder and her eyes a familiar grey-green—

“—don’t recommend declawing, but—”

— “Do you know Nora?” Emily asked the cat curiously, watching as she jolted upright and stared at Emily through the wire mesh. “And Spen—”

“Yes!” gasped the cat, pressing against the wire with a _mrrooow_. “Oh my gosh, yes! Are they okay? Where are they? Oh, my _Nora_ … how do you know them? She’s my baby, my kitten, _oh_ I _have_ to get out of here!”

Emily blinked.

Nora’s mom was _alive_.

“Do you know how to read too?” Emily asked, flicking her tail nervously. Spencer really seemed to _like_ Nora, after all, and Nora was a clever little thing, so maybe her…

The cat twitched her head, tilting it and staring at Emily. “Yes?” she replied slowly. “I learned as a kitten, before Spencer and I Ran Away… why?”

Oh.

“What’s your name?” Emily was full of questions and a little bit full of some strange twisty feeling too. The last thing she’d said to Spencer was that he was a _weird_ cat, but here was another cat just like him… maybe he wasn’t weird at all. He was brave and strange and a little bit impractical, but all of that made him special. A Very Special cat.

“Maeve,” said the cat. “What if I never see them again…”

Maybe Maeve was a Very Special cat too. And Emily?

She was just A Cat.

“Don’t worry,” she told Maeve quietly, hands picking her up to move her back to the carrier. She knew this place—it smelled very close to where they’d found Jack, and Elizabeth always put the carrier close enough to the car window that Emily could look out as they drove—and she bet she could find it again. “You will.”

 

* * *

 

At night, she and Ian were locked into their room. Everything they needed was in here: food, water, boxes.

She didn’t want to be in here tonight. And it was going to take being _Very_ Naughty to get out. Possibly the naughtiest she’d ever been.

“Oh no, what a disaster!” she sang loudly as she climbed the curtains with her wonderfully sharp claws, making sure to dig right in and twist about until they clattered down with a _crash!_ “Uh oh, what a mess,” she added smugly, as she flipped both litterboxes over and then carefully used the rug next to them for her business. “Oops,” she said, climbing up onto the shelf and one-by-one knocking anything that looked fragile down. Some of the fragile things didn’t break.

She climbed down and kept smacking them until they did.

She ate Ian’s food. She jumped into Elizabeth’s plate while she was eating dinner. She threw herself boldly into the potted plants and then ran dirt all over the house, making sure to tug open dresser drawers and pace back and forth on the whitest of clothes.

She waited until Elizabeth was almost ready to put them to bed and then wedged herself behind the bookshelf, howling like she was stuck until Elizabeth was forced to spent an hour and a half unpacking every book and carefully trying to ease her out. As soon as her human’s hand touched her, Emily slipped out the other side, jauntily trotted to the kitchen, and sat by her food-bowl with a plaintive _mew_?

Emily knew. Even closed doors would eventually be opened if one was sufficiently Naughty.

It worked. Bedtime came, and Emily was shut downstairs— _away_ from where Elizabeth could hear her singing every song she knew. Away from Elizabeth, but right by the windows with the latches that looked _just_ like the ones that Spencer had undone to get Jack out of the cage.

“Right,” Emily said smugly to herself, jumping up onto the sill and patting at the latch. Outside, dew glinted on the damp lawns and the sky above was starry and clear. “If _Spencer_ can do this, I certainly can. Spencer hasn’t a ribbon to his name…”

But the latch firmly refused all her efforts to tug at it, the wood making sad noises under her determined claws. But she kept trying and biting and batting until—

_Tap tap tap_ said the window.

Emily, with fixed decorum, fell backwards from the sill and onto her tail. After climbing up quickly and glancing around to make sure no one was looking, she tipped up onto her back legs and peered up at the window.

_Tap tap tap_ said the paw poking at it from the other side. The white paw, smoothly turning into a brown leg, which vanished and was replaced by a little pink nose and two wide eyes.

“Spencer!” gasped Emily. In return, Spencer’s mouth moved but there was no sound. She jumped up, rubbing against the glass with excitement at seeing him, feeling him do the same on the other side as he greeted her. “How do I get the window open?”

Spencer didn’t seem to be able to hear her either, but he placed his forepaws against the glass—she put hers against his with the glass between them, seeing his whiskers twitch shyly at the gesture—and peered down at the latch. Dropping down, she mimicked what she’d been trying to do, watching his paws carefully as he mimed for her what he wanted her to do.

It was a silent, anxious few minutes before the latch popped open under her paws, the window scraping open, and she was Outside!

“Spencer!” she gasped again, tackling him from the sill. They both tumbled off with shared squeaks, landing in the flowerbed below and rolling in the begonias. Spencer had a flower stuck to his ear. Emily didn’t even lick it off—dirty ears or not, he’d _found_ her. “How did you find me?”

He wiggled under her and purred as he said, “Washington Way. I remembered your collar and, um, I thought…”

She peered down at him. “Thought what?”

When his reply came, it was gentle: “I thought… I wanted to ask… well, you didn’t answer me. Did you _want_ to go Home?”

Emily didn’t even think about that.

“No,” she said, and pressed her nose to his, closing her eyes and finding that deep part in her chest that would… _there_. She began to purr, a thin, nervous sound that soon resonated from her chest and into his: “No, I think I’m quite happy with you, please.”

In return, he shyly licked her whiskers, his own purr echoing. A weird cat, an imperfect cat, a wonderful cat… but most of all, Emily decided, he was Her Cat.

And then she remembered Maeve.

“Oh, I found—” she began, sitting upright, and that was when the night split apart with a throbbing yowl that made her feel small and young and like she needed to curl down and inside herself. Puffing up with fear, her and Spencer both whirled to face the threat looming above.

“RrrrRrrrrRRRRrrrr,” throbbed Ian, his muzzle bared back and his fur _huge_. His thickset tail lashed angrily, his claws extended, and he looked big and _dangerous_ and _male_. “How _dare you_ come here!”

“We’re leaving,” squeaked Spencer, backing away. So small in comparison with his tail tucked low and ears slicked back. “We’re just going, we’re—”

“Not going anywhere, Lauren,” Ian said coldly. Emily swallowed. She wasn’t one to take being told what to do kindly, but Ian’s voice was dark and honeyed and sinking deep into some crucial part of her. “You’re _mine_.”

Emily took a step away and then a step back before nervously jittering on the spot, unsure. Ian had always been there. She _knew_ him. He was a constant. Could she defy that?

That was more than being Naughty.

“I don’t want to stay,” she said finally, seeing a light flicker on overhead as Elizabeth woke to the rancorous growls emanating from her tom. “I want to go with Spencer. I don’t _want_ to be Inside.”

“You don’t get any wants,” Ian snapped, and leapt. Emily squeaked as he scruffed her boldly, still smaller than he was and barely able to stop him from hauling her bodily back towards the window. “You’re not your own cat, Lauren, you’re _mine_ and you’re _Elizabeth’s_ and you’re **_collared_**.”

Around her neck, the collar was heavy and proved just that. Emily froze, uncertain. More lights were flickering on inside.

But then the was a low _rrrrrrrrr_ that wasn’t honeyed and it wasn’t deep and it didn’t make her feel hot and girly and lonely at all. She turned her head. Spencer stalked Ian with his fur fluffed up too, his brown eyes furious and his ratty tail high. _Rrrrrrrr_ he said in a voice just like his purr but angrier. “She’s not _yours_. Emily is her _own_ cat, now let her go or I’ll **make** you.” **_Rrrrrrrrrr_** he kept grumbling and Emily joined in with her own snarling _ssssss **sssssss**_ of anger.

“No—” Ian began, but to speak he had to release her. She leapt out of his jaws and hurtled to Spencer, arching her back and dancing about in front of her with her marvellous Claws bared and her tail an arch of anger. She’d fight him too! She’d fight anyone who tried to stop her!

“I’ll eat you if you try to stop me!” she boasted with another hiss and then spat at him for extra emphasis. “We’ll both eat you, Spencer and I, and you’ll be nothing but cat litter in the end! What a tom! Barely a tom at all!”

“Soft tom,” meowed Spencer, winding under her and looking out through her front legs. “Coddled tom. Can’t-fight-us-both-tom.”

“Gonna-be-alone-tom,” Emily added, twitching with some wild, furious energy.

The front door opened, Elizabeth hurrying out. Uh oh.

Suddenly, Spencer popped up next to her, scruffing her like the dumbfounded Ian had. Emily squeaked with shock, dragged forward with her ears yanked cruelly off her head, but then there was a _pop_ and she was—

Free. The collar hung in Spencer’s mouth, limp and lifeless and not holding her anymore.

He spat it out. Elizabeth yelled.

Emily yelled back, and then they both turned and fled that place with their tails high and hearts jaunty. And she never, ever looked back.


	8. Chapter 8

**8.**

“We’re five cats versus _that_ ,” Morgan said uneasily. “What can a bunch of cats do?”

Emily thought this was a rather silly statement. What _couldn’t_ five cats do? And the building they were staring down wasn’t quite so frightening—it was simply the vets. She went there once every three months; they had cold hands and one time they’d done something _unthinkable_ with a glass stick, but honestly, she’d never died there.

“We’ll be fine,” Spencer said firmly. Ever since Emily had told him that she knew where Maeve was, he’d taken this fierce, tomish countenance. His shoulders were held stiff, his chest puffed out, his tail lashing. It was a frightening, intense, Very Handsome look, and she rather thought that Maeve was a Very Lucky cat to have someone look like that for her.

But she wasn’t going to focus on how sad and cold that made her feel, left on the wayside, because it wasn’t a very Cat thing to do, to be jealous without any intention of reclaiming the thing one was jealous about. That was more like dog behaviour.

Speaking of dog.

“We should have brought Hotch,” JJ was saying, tugging at the bottom of the wired fence with her paws. “He could have stood Guard.”

“We don’t need Guarding,” Emily bragged. They slipped through, Spencer getting to work on the window as they ranged around him. “We’re cats. We Guard _ourselves_.”

But the Others still looked uneasy.

She stopped Spencer before he slid inside. They were first, of course, the Others following their lead on this Auspicious Rescue, as Emily was already calling it. “Don’t get hurt,” she warned him, “or I’ll be mad.”

He did it again, that weird muzzle curl thing, like a human grin but more catty, all fangy and twitchy and keen. “When have I ever let you down?” he tried to say, but she cut _that_ off right smart.

“Last week when we almost died in a housefire,” she said, “The day before that when you were almost eaten by a dog. Yesterday, when you tried to fight a Big Tom, you wet rat of a thing, oh gosh, I don’t know, Spencer!”

But he licked her nose and then her ears, both times fast and purring gently through his fierceness. “Nothing will happen,” he said firmly. “We’ll be fine.”

But on their way out of the yard, Maeve and any stray cat who’d asked to be released in tow, a Man with a Gun arrived.

 _Oh, catshit,_ Emily thought, as the Man aimed the gun at her. _Oh catshit!_ she thought again as she found that all her Cleverness had abandoned her.

But there was a blur of fur and Fast and she was on the ground and the world exploded around her. They ran, all of them. A Boom was a Reason for Running. And Running and Running and Running with no Others around her until the Boom was gone and the Man was too and her paws were sore and burning and she was Lost.

She was Lost and Spencer wasn’t there.

 

* * *

 

Being Lost wasn’t a permanent thing for a cat. She found her way home. It took all night and she jumped at every shadow, ready to Run again if a shadow turned into a Man or a Gun or a—

A shadow, as though waiting for her to let her guard down, shifted and turned into a Dog.

“Hotch,” she mewled, slinking over to him on her belly and winding around his legs. Not trembling, not at all, and she purred with rapid fear as he licked a wet strip down her raised fur.

“I Found you,” he said solemnly. “Come on.”

She followed him Home, limping the whole way and with none of her words working quite right. A Fright was more than a Shock. The Boom had shaken all the sense out of her, and she couldn’t think to speak. To ask. But they didn’t go Home.

“Where?” she managed, pausing on the corner as the sun began to rise. “Why are we going _back_?”

Back to the Man. Back to the Boom. She felt rattled to the bone just thinking about it.

“You aren’t the only one who didn’t come Home,” replied Hotch.

Oh.

Oh no.

 _Of course_ he’d gotten hurt. Of hecking course. Because that was just how he seemed to work, this stupid, ratty, terrible, no-good, just plain awful cat. They found blood half-way there, a speckle-trail winding and looping around with no sense of direction. It turned into a dragging mark of failing paws. It changed into a tepid, swampy pipe and a curled-up ball of ragged fur at one end. It twisted into Hotch pulling Spencer out gently, the cat’s limbs poking out at all kinds of awkward angles and his fur a bloodied black. Emily stayed back. She wasn’t brave enough to see him Dead, not with his pretty fur all hollowed out and empty.

“Stay,” Hotch commanded her, ignoring her fear and laying that wet, twisted thing next to her. She looked anywhere but at it. “I will go get The Man.”

 _Which man,_ she wondered. The Boom again? She didn’t think Hotch would be so cruel. What she said instead, finding some Brave part of herself, was, “Is he Alive?”

“Almost,” Hotch replied, and then he was gone.

Emily swallowed her fear and looked down. Spencer looked… like Spencer. Almost.

Almost.

Lips curled back over white gums and whiter teeth, his eyes open but covered by a filmy sheen. There were ants on his paws. Those paws were dirty. His ears were dirty. She found the bit where the Boom had taken a bite out of him and licked away the dirt from around it, before moving onto his ears. It wouldn’t do for him to Go Away with dirty ears.

And under her tongue, he breathed.

“Ask me again,” she goaded him. “Ask me if I want to go Home. I have an even better answer now.”

But he didn’t.

Barking. She stood over him, chest puffed out and tail lashing, and yowled a promise that she would Guard him against anything else come to bite him. Yowled more, yowled louder, sang of Fear and Cleverness and a Purr she missed.

Footsteps. Hotch galloped down the slope, barking still and turning in tight, twisty circles, following her yowl. Behind him, The Man from their cabin strode, dressed for the night and looking very, very confused. He saw them instantly.

“Hurt him and I’ll eat you,” Emily promised weakly.

“I’ll be damned,” The Man replied, pulling out his ‘cell’ from his pocket and tapping away. “Good fucken’ Dog.”

Hotch wagged his tail sadly and then The Man took Spencer away. He tried to take Emily too, but she slipped away and went back to the mulberry bush. She lay alone and didn’t sleep at all.

She was sure he was Gone.


	9. Chapter 9

**9.**

He didn’t come back.

She slunk back Home and found the Others waiting. JJ was dirty. She’d spent most of the night helping look in all the dark and dreary hide-aways that Cats liked to Die in. Emily washed her and didn’t say a word. Morgan lurked on the porch roof, lashing his snub-tail at anyone who went too close. Hotch lay on the porch with his nose on his paws and his eyes locked on the drive where The Man would appear when he returned. Jack sat next to him and said very little at all, just watched.

Eventually, the quiet waiting grated and Emily squeezed under the house and right to the back, where there was nothing but spiders and rotting leaves to share her misery. She wanted to be alone.

They wouldn’t let her be.

First came Nora. “I miss him too,” she said, and snuggled in tight without a care for the spiders that marched angrily around them and tried to make webs encompassing Emily’s tail.

Next came Maeve. “I wasn’t worth that,” she said softly, curling up on Nora’s other side and getting her shoulder washed by the almost-grown-kitten. “I wasn’t worth him.”

It was disgustingly uncatlike, and Emily furiously agreed. She turned her back on them both. Eventually, Henry appeared and Nora slipped away with him, her mourning cut short by the appearance of her beau. Emily rumbled angrily; cats didn’t grieve. Not like this. Not even a day had passed since he’d Gone, and already his scent was disappearing, his fleeting pawprints on their lives fading. That was the cat way.

And it was a _shit_ way.

Ethan appeared at some point. “He was a Good Cat,” he said sadly, sniffing at Maeve’s fur. “We’ll miss him always.” Always, to a cat, meant until the next distraction, and already Emily could see them being distracted by each other.

“I thought he was your mate,” she said bitterly to Maeve as the other cat climbed up to follow Ethan away, her tail twitching girlishly.

Maeve looked surprised. “Oh, no,” she said, “we just had kittens. There’s a difference, you know. Spencer was a lovely little-while-mate, but none of us really—well, except Will and JJ—bother with mating forever. It’s such a terribly long time, and we’re cats. It serves us best to never let our feelings linger. Thank you though, for saving me. And him. I… I _do_ miss him, I know you don’t think I do, but I do. And I always will, even when I forget him. You’ll understand one day, when you’re older.”

Emily didn’t think she would.

Hotch appeared. “Cats don’t do this,” he told her, squeezing tightly into her space with cobwebs on his muzzle. She licked them off for him, working on his ears while he was stuck there and couldn’t sit up and out of reach. “Cats don’t get… like this.”

“I’m a shit cat,” she snapped. “And I don’t _want_ to forget him. It hasn’t even been a day!”

“Cats Die,” he said, his eyes woeful. “They do. I Guard and I Guard and cats still Die. I remember each one I lose, even if the Others don’t seem to. I could list them, if you like.”

“Please don’t,” she replied, feeling ill.

“I’m just saying, Emily, I don’t think you’re a… shit… cat. I think… I think you’d be a very Good Dog. And I think because of that you won’t forget him. Just like I don’t forget them. Maybe we’re not so different after all.”

But there was a crunch of wheels outside and a yowl from Morgan and they both bolted out—Emily a far bit quicker than Hotch, for obvious reasons, to mill around the front porch hopefully.

But The Man was alone.

“Ahh, hello, blackie,” he said when he saw her, his hand rubbing his face thoughtfully as he examined her. “Your friend is going to be just fine—he’ll be home tomorrow. What on earth have you got all over your head?”

Emily hissed at him as he reached towards her, pleased when his hand receded quickly from her sharp Claws. “Where is he?” she demanded, circling on the spot and yowling angrily. “What have you done with him? I know you have him!”

But The Man just chuckled, raising his eyebrows at them and then looking at Hotch. “And you,” he grunted, crouching and holding his hand out for Hotch to sniff, “you’re far too clever to be a stray. What are you going to do with all these sudden animals, Dave…?”

Hotch licked his hand. Such an _easy_ dog.

“Do you think he knows where Spencer is?” she asked Hotch as The Man vanished inside and then returned with a steak that he cut into fine pieces and quietly split between her and Hotch, not making the mistake of trying to touch her again as she ate and rumbled warnings at him intermittently.

“I don’t know,” said Hotch patiently. “We’ll just have to wait.”


	10. Chapter 10

**10.**

Spencer was back!

Emily was dozing on the porch when The Man’s car crunched in on the gravel and he climbed out, carrying a towel-wrapped, dozy Spencer with only his head—encased in a strange white cone—poking out.

“Spencer!” she yowled, hearing cats from everywhere come running.

“Daddy!” Nora wailed, almost tripping up The Man as he stopped and gaped at the sudden river of cats whirling around him.

“Alive Alive Alive Alive!” chanted everyone else happily.

But Spencer merely craned his head back in the towel and cat-grinned stupidly at her, his whiskers weirdly twitched and his eyes all unfocused. “’Lo Mil’y,” he mumbled, wiggling in the towel. “Sss’ Good… I can’t feel anything, I am just a… head. A cat head. Juuust a head, oh no, oh dear…”

Emily blinked.

“Oh my Dog, he’s _broken_ ,” she exclaimed, horrified. “The Man took his brains out!”

“Oh no!” wailed the Others, all surging back in horror.

“What the fucking fuck fuck,” The Man was muttering, dodging cats as he looked from one to the other, arms wrapped tightly around the towel. “What the _fucking fuck,_ I did _not_ rent out cat island, did I? I must have been unclear, apparently, ‘full utilities’ also means _thirty fucking cats what the fuck._ ”

“Are you okay?” Hotch asked Spencer, standing up on his hind legs and sniffing at the cat. “You smell very strange, cat.”

“Thirty cats and a dog,” The Man said. Jack appeared, yapping and spinning in circles when he saw Spencer was back. “…Thirty cats and a dog and that dog’s dog. Oh, I’m going to need more steak…”

“I’m woooooonderful,” Spencer slurred, beaming at Hotch. “And it’s a Good Dog, looko, a Goodo Dog… Goody… Woody… are you made of wood? Do you float? I ate wood once. It hurt. Mice are tastier. Oh, Hiiii Emily, do you like my new head? They took my old one off and fixed it up and put it back and screwed it wrong and—” He had to pause to breathe and seemed to get distracted mid-huff, peering up at The Man and going _mrrow?_

“Completely broken,” Emily announced gleefully. “Mad as a rabbit. _Completely_ nutballs. This is _wonderful_.”

“You’re wonderful,” Spencer corrected. “Uh oh, up I go, wheeeeee,” and he was carried up the steps and into the house.

The cats sat in silence, looking at each other.

“Well,” said JJ.

Hotch hummed, “I’m sure he’ll be… himself, soon.”

“I hope not,” Nora said. “He seems _fun_ now!”

Emily sighed. Well, at least he was back. “I’m going to go wash his ears,” she announced, and flounced up and through the open door without a second-thought.

And, just like that, she was back Inside.

 

* * *

 

 _Bonk_.

Emily kept her eyes shut, enjoying dozing on a nice soft bed.

 _Bonk bonk_.

“You need to be careful of walls, Spence, your head is bigger now,” she said sleepily.

“I am being—” _Bonk._ “Oh.”

A woeful meow followed. She opened her eyes with a sigh and looked down at him as he walked in a wobbly circle that ended with him slamming the cone into the wall again.

_Bonk._

“You’re a catastrophe,” she told him. He turned plaintive eyes onto her.

“But I’m your catastrophe?” was the hopeful reply. “I need to pee. I can’t find any dirt. Do I pee here?”

He was looking at a pair of slippers. Emily eyed them.

“Sure,” she said, and rolled back to sleep.

She had a reputation to uphold, of course.

 

* * *

 

“I have no idea what to feed cats, so here.” The Man dropped a plate of food in front of them, sitting down with a huff on the floor and examining Spencer’s bandaged side. “Enjoy.”

The plate was full of… worms. Oodly worms covered in gravy like Emily’s wet food used to have, except it was red and smelled sharp and there were round lumps of meat tumbled in it as well. Spencer leaned against Emily’s side, looking down at the… food?

“Does he want us to eat that?” he asked Emily, still woozy but not quite as odd as he’d been. “I… I don’t know if I can.”

“It doesn’t look dangerous,” Emily mused, leaning down and sniffing the plate warily as The Man watched.

“No, I mean… I don’t think I _can_ eat it.” This proclamation was following by the _bonk_ of the cone smacking the plate as Spencer tried to dip his head. Another _bonk_ as he flopped to the side and mouthed helplessly at the food, before rolling completely around and waggling his tongue towards it.

“Ah,” said Emily.

“Ah,” said The Man. “Oh dear.”

“Just…” Emily examined the cone. “Do this.” She mimed slamming her head forward into the food, stopping short of actually getting gravy on her face and neatly licking a ball of meat. It was surprisingly delicious, and she quickly used a paw to roll it over her side of the plate before he—

_BONK._

“Good lord,” said the Man.

“Mmmmmfmrrrow,” said the plate of worms with Spencer’s face imbedded into it, the actual words muffled by the cone. There was a _sccrrrape_ of the cone dragging and catching under the plate and he popped back up, flipping the food into The Man’s lap. “I was saying—oops.”

They all stared at the food dripping into the carpet. Emily reached out a gentle paw and snagged her meatball back, tugging it close and barely holding back a delighted cackle at the mess.

“Oh, Spence, you’re the _Naughtiest_ ,” she managed, wheezing a little.

“Alright,” said The Man. “Alright… alright… good god, Dave, don’t ever tell anyone about this. _Ever._ ”

And as the cats watched, dumbfounded, he lifted up a long worm with his fingers and held it out, carefully lowering it into the cone and in front of the gravy-coated cat.

“Here kitty kitty,” he said, “Open wide.”

 

* * *

 

A Strange Thing happened that night.

Emily was busy cleaning gravy from Spencer— _not_ an easy task—when a car pulled up Outside. That was uninteresting to her. Her belly was full, her Spencer was back, his brains seemed mostly intact, and his new head, although unwieldy, seemed to be somewhat functional. There was a soft bed for them to sleep on and maybe, just maybe, The Man was okay at petting.

But then the human who drove the uninteresting car spoke.

“Someone said they’d seen her here,” said Elizabeth’s voice, and Emily shot upright, trembling. She didn’t know what they were saying, but how had Elizabeth _found_ her. They’d taken the collar off! “You must have seen her—she’s worth a lot of money, a lot. She’s black and a _pure-bred_ and I—”

“Sorry,” The Man replied, cutting her off. “No black cats here. Just me and the dog, uh… Aaron. Aaron the dog. My dog, Aaron. I hope you find her though.”

And that was that. Elizabeth left. The Man walked inside and looked at them both, his mouth all funny.

“I don’t want cats,” he said, walking away and then walking back and looking at them again, “I certainly don’t want _weird_ cats.” And again, he walked away. Emily and Spencer waited, knowing he’d return. He did, with a final: “Did one of you bastards pee in my slippers?”

“I think he likes us,” Spencer said sleepily. “And there’s sauce in my ear.”


	11. Chapter 11

**11.**

“I’m going to die here,” Spencer moaned melodramatically, rolling around with his coffee-coloured belly exposed to the sunbeam leaking in through The Man’s windows. “I’m going to die here with dirty ears and no one loving me and you’ll leave and go have kittens with Ethan—”

“Excuse me,” she snorted, affronted, “kittens with that chubby tom? No thank _you_.”

“—he’s buff, not chubby, and he’s _ginger_ and maybe you like gingers and my head huuurts and everything is woozy and there’s no sun here, none at all—”

Emily decided that she was going to start stealing the little white bugs that The Man kept putting in Spencer’s food. They were making him _strange._

“You’ll be Outside soon,” she said with a patience she wasn’t feeling, lashing her tail when he rolled right on over to her with his cone going _bonk bonk bonk_ the whole way and peered sadly up at her on her perch. “You need to get better.”

“I am better,” he said mournfully. “I’m as good as I’m going to get, Mediocre Cat. Soft-tom, can’t-fight-a-boomstick-tom, can’t-be-a-good-mate-tom…”

He was disgustingly self-loathing when unwell, she was finding. He needed a good box around the ears and a wash, neither of which she felt like giving him right now.

“No onnnnne loooooovvveeees me,” he sang, mouth wide open.

“I love you,” she said. “But I’m leaving. I need some _sensible_ conversation.”

And she leapt from the dresser to the window and left him there going _mro mrooow mrow mrow_ to himself as he worked all the crazy out. Outside was deliciously sunny, deliciously warm, and she padded about and rolled her eyes at the distant sounds of Spencer continuing to sing as she found a warm part of the drive and lay down.

She heard the car coming long before it actually pulled into the drive, getting up and grumpily shifting out of the way. She wasn’t dumb. Everyone knew that cars loved to bite cats, and bite them good. There wouldn’t be much left of her if she was stupid enough to take on a _car_.

But the car saw her and did Something Strange. Something she’d never seen a car do before.

It moved from the drive, where cars Must Always Be, and galloped across the grass to where she was standing, faster than she could dash.

She leapt, going for a tree. She didn’t make it.

BANG.

Ow.

She must have squealed. She wasn’t sure. All she knew was whirling through the air and landing on the ground and dizzy dizzy dizzy—nothing.

No wonder Spencer was so crazy. Her head didn’t feel like a head at all anymore. Just… hurting. Hurting and singing and she wondered if Spencer had heard her admit she loved him. She wondered if The Man would get her a new head as well. She hoped it would be as Pretty as this one.

And then she woke properly and realized there was another man, not Their Man but the man from a long time ago— _Foyet Pest Control_ , she read dozily, and was gleeful to realize she’d learned _words_ —standing over her with a crackly bag. “Oops,” he said, crouching and smiling at her with a smile that wasn’t nice at all. “Guess he should have taken the _deal_. Then you’d be humanely disposed of, little rat, not Dead like _this_.”

Dead.

She knew that word.

“I’m not Dead,” she tried to mewl but it came out all peeping and strangled. She _wasn’t_ dead. Not even close. Just stunned! She just needed to shake the bang out of her bones and she’d be fine! But he was leaning closer, wrapping the bag around her, picking her up, and she _still couldn’t move._

But she found her voice.

“Spencer!” she screamed, and lashed out. Claws tore the bag and she fell heavily, tangled in it and screeching with anger.

Her screech strangled and stopped and then suddenly grew again in a cacophony of noise as suddenly there were more voices all singing along with her, throbbing with fury.

“ _Woof!”_ roared Hotch, the biggest bark she’d ever heard him bark. “Get away! My Job is to get you away! Now, AWAY!”

And, beyond all that noise, there was a throbbing, wailing yowl that she recognised.

“I’ll eat you!” yelled Spencer, further away and then suddenly closer, and a weight landed on the bag and danced about. “Touch her again and I’ll eat you and spit you out and eat you again!”

It was, she noted as she shook the bag and crawled out of it, a very _her_ insult, and she was so proud of him for learning it. What a Cat!

“I’ll fight you and I’ll fight your car and I’ll fight all your friends too!” Spencer continued, tripping over the cone and falling off the bag with a _mrow_!

Ah.

Maybe he was still a little silly. She’d better stop him—

But she didn’t have to. The Man did, coming tearing out of the house and running across the lawn to them.

“Your cat was on the road—” the stranger began.

“Your car is on my cat!” The Man roared back. “Get your ass away from her! She’s mine, you jagoff!”

Mine.

Emily knew that word too.

“Council regulations state that all unowned cats must be dispos—” the stranger was continuing. Emily looked around groggily. _All_ of their colony was there. Cats everywhere, all hissing, all angry, all circling around the man and ignoring how scared he looked. Hotch bristled and snarled, Jack growling behind him, and Emily felt like she _belonged._

“They’re not unowned,” The Man blurted out. Then stopped, winced, and continued: “I own them.”

“… _All_ of them?”

“Are you deaf! Yes! All of them! I like cats, okay! They’re mine! Now, get the fuck off my lawn before I tell Aaron to bite your skinny as—”

“Emily Emily Emily Emily Emily,” Spencer was yammering, but the one Man was becoming two and he was surrounded by an army of yowling cats and barking dogs and the sun whirled overhead as she closed her eyes. _Emily Emily Emily Emily…_

_Ow._


	12. Chapter 12

**12.**

Emily woke up, stiff and sore and on the softest surface she’d laid on since Running Away. She was also warm. Blissfully warm, and rumbling with the kind of deep resonation that she knew only had one awkwardly exuberant source. Slitting open one gritty feeling eye, she found a pink nose inches from hers, his muzzle turned up in a kitty smile with his own eyes tightly shut. She booped that nose with hers, wincing as he jolted awake with a skip in the _purrrrrrruh-rrrrr_ and looked at her. Even as his purring paused for a heartbeat, more continued from around them.

“Ask me,” she mumbled, snuggling closer after a swift look around at their surroundings. They were in a familiar bedroom, the windows thrown open and every available surface littered with sleepy cats contentedly watching them.

“Wha?” he asked, brown eyes blinking and widening: “Oh! Em… do you want to go Home?”

“Yes,” she replied, and the purring in the room stopped suddenly. Spence made a soft _oh_ that hurt, but she quickly followed with: “And I _am_ Home. Right here. Hi, hello, you’re so lovely and warm.”

The purring started up again, louder than before.

“Atta ’cat,” Hotch murmured from beside the bed, his tail thumping on the hardwood floor.


	13. Chapter 13

**13.**

What followed was Change. Emily watched it and felt it and knew it. Change was the bane of a cat’s life—it was the most unCat thing there was, but this Change, she thought, might be Something Different.

Something Different like waking up one morning and finding the man had closed all the windows and was busy moving hissing cat after hissing cat into carriers just like Emily’s had used to be. She’d shared Spencer’s, and soothed his panic. The Man wouldn’t hurt them.

He wasn’t the type.

Change like their new home, just as spacious as her old but with the windows never closed. The Inside was the Outside and everything was Home. Change like the shiny new collars they all wore; Spencer taught her to read them. **Blackbird** said hers proudly, right above the line of words that told them where Home was in human. Spencer's said **Pipecleaner** , but the Home was the same. Emily decided that she rather liked them and scolded Spencer when he tried to wiggle his off.

Change like finding herself in the sassy, over-confident kitten she’d used to be. Change like seeing Jack grow into a Good Dog alongside his dad and learning how to Guard their new Home together. Change like seeing Spencer’s fur grow out properly with regular meals and him losing the ratty skinniness and becoming a Most Definitely Handsome cat.

Her Most Definitely Handsome cat.

“Oh yes, you’re a Good Human,” she purred to herself, padding through her home one countless day After and finding that Her Human—she shared with the others, but he was Hers for sure—had been wonderful and laid out _exactly_ what she wanted right then. Warm and cosy and soft and lovely smelling, just like him and his scents, and a little bit of her, and she snuggled down deep in the dark and busily got to work.

Spencer found them first, of course he did. “Hello,” she greeted him proudly. “I made us lots of ears to wash now.”

“Oh, _Emily,”_ he breathed, peering into her nest and at their lovely little litter of black and brown lives. “Look what you’ve done! You’ve been **wonderful**.”

“The most wonderful?” she asked, because maybe she was still a little bit the kitten she’d used to be.

“The **Most** ,” he reassured her, and tried to climb in. She hissed, because she had to, really, but relented and let him lay with his front end in and his rump on the floor outside. A tom’s place was _not_ in the nest.

The Man found her next. “My best shirts, Blackbird, _noooo_ ,” he groaned, opening the closet and finding them purring there. “Why would you _do_ this to me, they’re _Armani_.”

“Mew,” said one of the kittens.

_“Mewww,”_ said another, who Emily suspected was going to be Trouble.

“Look what I made,” Emily added proudly.

“We made,” Spencer corrected. “Come on, Em, I _explained_ the process to you—twice.” He had. Emily thought the whole thing was unnecessarily complex—clearly they’d made kittens because they _wanted_ to, not because of any strange nightly habits. But he was ignoring her eyeroll and speaking again to Their Man with a low _churr:_ “Haven’t we been _Naughty_?” He said it with a smile and a purr, and Emily joined in happily.

“This is what you get for not getting them fixed, Dave,” said Their Man to himself. Emily didn’t really know what that meant, but she was sure she’d be able to wiggle out of it.

After all, she was undoubtedly the Most Naughty cat there had ever been, from Now until **The End**.


End file.
